Final Draft

This is the final draft of my horror film. We took on board everything that everyone said we could do to change it however we did leave some things as they were because we liked them and felt that it contributed to the genre of horror.

Changes that have been made

After we got our feedback we went and edited our films. We moved the titles up so you could see them properly. We also added music in at the start of the film, different music to what we had used before so people didn't get bored of hearing the same music. We also took out the picture of the footprint and made the other two pictures longer. As some people didn't understand the link between the start of the film and the slow motion part at the end we tried to link it by using the same effect. However as some effects go wrong when you export them we exported that little clip to check if it would be ok and it was.

We also changed the name and added the same effect to the last title screen as we did to the slow motion part and the pictures. The effect that we used was Colour Offset.

Analysis of first draft

We got people from year 13 to watch our films and make comments on what we could do to make them better.
Everyone thought that the music that we have put into our film helps increase the tension. However they suggested that we add music right at the start as you have to wait ages for the music to kick in and your attention doesn't get grabbed as fast. 4 out of 6 people didn't understand the story line and the order that the scenes were placed in. They said that we should put a title in before the party scene as to make it clearer, which we did it was just too low down. One comment was "Don't understand the link between title sequence and opening scene? I thought one of the girls was killed but then she's at a party? Not at all the clear". The reason why it wasn't clear was because the title '24 hours earlier' was covered at the bottom which made it difficult to understand.

Most people agreed with the contrast between light and dark, but made suggestions of making the scenes lighter to make it stand out even more. Everyone agreed that you can tell that it is going to be a horror film when you watch it, which is what we were aiming for so that is good news. Our film was rated, on average 3-4 out of 5, 5 being excellent. As well as 5 out of 6 people saying that they would watch the end of our film, everyone thought that our characters were appropriate to the horror genre and that our title suited that as well. One comment we received was " The title sequence was scary, really worked well with good camera shots that fit the horror genre well". It is good to get good feedback like this as it makes me feel like we have done a good job.

Of course there are some comments that aren't as praising but they are there to help us make our horror film better so any comments are welcome. Some of the comments that were received were "Good acting, but was the slow-mo bit at the end?", "Red pictures and screens - get rid of, don't make much sense". I know that these comments are supposed to help us but we're not going to change everything about our film. I like our red scenes as it is different but some people might not like it as much.

First draft of Horror Opening

This is the first draft of my Horror Opening. We had a few problems along the way of making this but we managed to get through it. We are going to get people to watch it and give us feedback so we know what we can do to improve it. 

Post It Notes - What I think could be made better

I made post it notes and stuck them up on my wall of what I think could be made better in our horror film. These are just my opinions and other people might be different.

I want to try and make these changes when we go to edit again, and of course make the changes that other people think we should make as well.

Last minute ideas

While editing before the first draft me and Helen thought that our film might look good if we add some pictures in  and change them with effects. We tried it out and we think that they look quite good.

Picture 1

Picture 2

We have only added in 2 photos as to not take the attention away from the actual film.

New film name ideas

After we finished our first draft of the horror film I decided that our film name was too boring and original. So we thought about some other names but nothing seemed to work. Eventually we typed in unknown into a thesaurus in Google and it came up with words like :

Desolate
Dark
Unexplained
Anonymous
Distant
Hidden

But we found a name that we thought was different and better than our old name. We chose - Incognito, which means In Disguise. I think it suits our horror film much better than the Unknown.

Music Ideas

Music is one of the key things in making your film what you want it to be. I got my choice of music from a website called Mp3Unsigned. It had a list of different types of music.

To find the music I wanted, I had to type in horror in the search bar and then select the Halloween Comp music. They had a great range of music on there and these are some of the songs that I liked:

http://www.mp3unsigned.com/HalloweenComp2010#Phantom+of+the+Font+%28Pete+Vines%29

http://www.mp3unsigned.com/HalloweenComp2010#Sorta-Phantasm-ish+-+D.+Michaelson

http://www.mp3unsigned.com/HalloweenComp2010#Halloween+Theme+Beats+w/+Thomas+Moonan+-+Redshirt+Theory

http://www.mp3unsigned.com/Nano_Rebelion

There were some more on the site but I thought it would be better to only display a few songs.

2 more photos that will be used

Me and Helen will most likely use these photos in our horror film. The arrows represent confusion on which way to go which would relate to the seperation of the two girls and the danger sign would obviously highlight the fact that they are in danger. We would zoom in on the word danger as that is the focus point of that photo.

Horror Opening Questionnaire

We were required to get feedback from people on how we could improve our film. Although my group edited seperately we came up with a questionnaire together. We came up with these questions :

1. Does the music increase the tension?
2. Is the story easy to follow?
3. Is the contrast noticeable between light and dark atmosphere?
4. Does the start of the film make it clear it is going to be a horror film?
5. What do you think about the way the credits have been placed?
6. What would you rate our film out of 5?
7. Were the characters appropriate to horror?
8. Is our title appropriate to our film?
9. Would you want to watch the end of our film?
10. What changes can we make?

We also asked if they are male or female and what year they are in at school to see if age or gender affects the opinion of someone.

Original film name ideas

We wanted something creepy and mysterious for our film name so we came up with a few different ones such as:
The Unknown
Mysterious
Running


After some debating we chose the name The Unknown as it was the most mysterious and made people think about what was unknown and helped build up the anticipation. 

Different Fonts

There are a few different fonts to choose from for our film and there are some of the ones i liked:

These are the main fonts that I would have liked to use for my film. However I was working with someone and they didn't like these fonts and wanted to use a custom one to Adobe Premiere.

Photos that could possibly be used 2

Photos that could possible be used.

Words that relate to our films

I was told of this website where you type some words into a box and then submit it. It then arranges them in a random way and you can edit the colours, the layout and the font. What i've done here is thought of some relevant words for my film and displayed them on here.

Last Minute Decisions

Originally my group had planned to film a 'party scene' but scrapped that idea and went for a scene in the school corridors. However while editing the school scene we decided to go with our original plan. It turned out quite well and I believe that it is better than the scene we originally filmed.

We asked several people to come and be in our film to try and make it seem more realistic. We had music playing in the background and tried to make the atmosphere seem light and airy.

Horror Film Deadline

The deadline for our fully edited horror film is 20th January. By this date we will have had to cut, edit and add sound effects to make it as good as possible.

Different Stages

As went along we print screened it to show somw of the different stages that we went through. This shows you the process that you have to go through to make everything in your film just right.

Speed/Duration

Watching it through.

Looking at the title screen.

Editing a title screen.

Audio Gain.

Audio Control.